


Echoes, Silence, Patience, and Grace

by hanwritessolo



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-08
Updated: 2017-12-08
Packaged: 2019-02-12 01:18:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12948198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hanwritessolo/pseuds/hanwritessolo
Summary: When it comes to you, the usual austere Cor exhibits a gentleness in navigating your anxiety-riddled mind.





	Echoes, Silence, Patience, and Grace

“Can I ask you something?”

The question leaves you in a breath. You rest your chin and fold your hands on Cor’s chest, taking comfort in the warmth of his bare skin. More than you care to admit, your body is still recovering from a riveting soreness, a sweet, succulent ache that came from last night’s filthy rounds of bed wrecking.

In the gentle rays of the morning light, you watch Cor’s face illuminate with one of his rare smiles. With his bright blue eyes glued on you, he answers, “Anything for you.”

“Promise to tell me the truth?”

“Of course,” he sweeps a strand of your hair and tucks it behind your ear.

You purse your lip, hesitating to shatter this quiet, intimate moment with what you are about to ask, and then it escapes you—

“How… how can you put up with someone like me?”

The question hangs and thickens in the silence. You ask it with the purest intention of curiosity, and you are genuinely keen to know how someone like Cor could ever stay with someone like  _you_ — _you_ , whose anxieties are hard at work convincing yourself that you’re one fine tapestry of a disaster—and not wave a white flag of surrender in your recurring fits of uncertainty.

But Cor recognizes, almost too immediately, the indifferent tone of your voice in which your treacherous anxiety veils itself.

“Because I love you,” Cor briefly replies, stern and resolute, and the look in your eyes tell him that those words—the only words he saves only for you because you deserve it, all of it, and he means it for the first time in what he regards as his pathetic life—fall short to assuage whatever it is you’re feeling.

You are highly aware that Cor is too perceptive to a blistering fault. He considers you for a moment, and he sees you in full: the tremble of your mouth, the small quiver in your eyes, the faint wrinkle on your face. Cor registers all of it into a gnawing pain, and it’s enough for him to know, to  _truly_  know, that there is a war on your mind, a raging battle between the small flame of your confidence and the savage beasts of all your insecurities. Cor knows this all too well because he suffers from it, too. And true to Cor’s nature, he helplessly thirsts to decimate and quell your demons, but try as he might, any soldier of his caliber should know that some battles are not meant for him to win.

After a careful moment of silence, you follow through. “But… don’t you ever get tired of me? Because in all honesty,  _I’m_  really getting tired of me, and—“

“Hey,” Cor finally sits up in a terribly frantic urgency, and you follow suit. He gently takes your face with his warm, calloused hands. “Don’t. I—shit… I know I’m always having trouble with what I have to say, but…”

Cor tentatively ponders on what to say next, but as he looks at you and bathes you with his undivided attention, he relents to what he knows best. He may be a man of few words, but he sure is a man of action. And he may not be able to win your battles for you, but he sure as hell can fight it  _with_  you. He would rather spend his lifetime attempting every day to assure you with all the goodness that you are, than die without trying.

Cor pulls you close. He presses his lips on your forehead, and whispers, “I love you.”

“But—“

“No buts,” he slices through your protest, and his mouth finds the corner of your eye. He plants another soft kiss. “I love you.”

Your face slowly wrinkles into a smile, and yet you feel like crying. “Cor, I—“

“I need you to understand—” he hovers around the tip of your nose, and another kiss— “that I love  _all_ of you so,  _so_  much. Painfully so.”

“But I’m the worst.”

“You’re not,” he leaves another kiss on the side of your mouth, and he says, “And even if you are, I will still love you.”

A slight sob catches your throat. “Why?”

“Because I just do.”

Cor kisses the tears that stain the side of your face. Slowly, he traverses your cheek, your jaw, your chin. He litters you with soft, warm kisses probably enough to save you from a cold, winter’s night. He memorizes you with his lips, maps every outline of your face so gently, so delicately, so fiercely loving you with his own language, and in this moment, your heart brims full.


End file.
